BELIZE CITY, Wed. Feb. 28, 2018– There were sightings of a suspected drug plane which landed on a public road in Libertad Village, Corozal District, but by the time police had mobilized and went to the landing area, they found that the plane was only a blazing inferno and there was no evidence of its cargo, and neither was there any sighting of the pilot who landed it.

On Monday, February 26, another suspected drug plane had landed somewhere in the vicinity of Indian Church and Hill Bank villages, in the Orange Walk District, and was similarly set ablaze so that no evidence of its cargo could be discovered by authorities.

Unlike the most recent incident in Corozal which involved a twin-engine Beechcraft plane, the plane which landed in the Orange Walk District on Monday was not identified by means of its manufacturer or the model of plane it was.

Yesterday, the officer commanding the Corozal Police formation, Superintendent Sinquest Martinez, briefed the media on what the police know about the illicit landing and subsequent destruction of the Beechcraft.

Martinez said that sometime after 8:00 p.m. on Monday night, police received information about a plane that had landed in the Santa Cruz area in the Corozal District.

“I sent out a team of police officers out there; when they got out there, they saw a plane in flames. We conducted searches within the area last night and this morning. We haven’t found anything in respect to the plane, except the remains of the plane that has been found,” Martinez said.

Martinez was asked if the plane is a suspected drug plane, and he replied: “I don’t want to make any assumptions at this time, but I have my officers out there doing some investigation with the assistance of the BDF, who are around the district doing some other work along with us.”

Martinez was also asked to confirm if there were landings of other aircraft in the Corozal District last week, as has widely been rumored.

Martinez replied, “We didn’t have any landing of last week. As a matter of fact, it’s not any of us who control the radar; it’s the personnel at the Civil Aviation that control the radars, not us. We just work on information that we received.”

Martinez said that the illicit landings are a national and international concern, but “the police and the BDF will need to step up our patrols.’

The public can assist the security forces by calling 911, or the nearest police station, Martinez said.